Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The Social Style Survey

I was right. Q3 is unlike anything we’ve experienced so far, and will probably be different than Q4. It is just so… quiet…

I did want to mention our Leadership class though. Of all the classes we are taking this semester, this is by far my favourite. Just about every class, we have a case to read about someone in a leadership position at their organization. In class, we share our thoughts on what the leader did well, what was done poorly and how the leader could improve in the future.

We were also required to complete a social style survey. We were given a week to distribute an online survey to at least five people we interact with frequently (or have interacted with in the past.) If you wanted to know your social style within a professional setting, then our professor, Jia Lin Xie, recommended that we forward it to our old work colleagues. Otherwise, we could send it to our friends. I ended up sending my survey to several friends (and filling it out myself) and got a whopping 18 responses! Thanks to all who completed it for me!

Everyone received feedback based on the aggregate responses to the questionnaire which categorized you into four different styles:

According to the responses, my social style as seen by others is expressive, which matched my own perception of my behaviour. The feedback given to us indicated that others describe my behaviour as “friendly, candid and receptive.” It also said that expressives “bring out the feelings of others by showing their own feelings readily” and that our outgoing, spirited manner encourages many people to confide is us about their own dreams and ambitions.

Using these results, we had to write a short paper about a professional relationship we’ve had in the past that was sub-optimal based on differences in social styles. We then swapped our papers with two other classmates and offered each other suggestions as to how to improve our versatility when interacting with others with a different social style.

Altogether, a worthwhile exercise! I wish everyone could take the social style survey – I think knowing whether your self-perception differs from how others see you, and knowing how best to work with people with a different social style would be beneficial to anyone working in business.